Author Topic: Another problem with RFM, This time graphics on monitor  (Read 1458 times)

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Marty Machine

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You might find it easier to fit them on the VGA pins on the board itself, a lot easier than surgery on your vga cable or getting inside the monitor itself....
For the short length of cable used it won't really matter that the 75ohm resistors are fitted on the cga-vga card. (on the VGA connector of course).
Otherwise, the other way would be to grab a small vga/dongle casing (as used on the CGA side of things), and fit the resistors in there.

Good luck, hope it all works out 100% and it should be a good fix to spread around to everyone who needs it ;-)

Offline Dazzat

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You might find it easier to fit them on the VGA pins on the board itself, a lot easier than surgery on your vga cable or getting inside the monitor itself....
For the short length of cable used it won't really matter that the 75ohm resistors are fitted on the cga-vga card. (on the VGA connector of course).
Otherwise, the other way would be to grab a small vga/dongle casing (as used on the CGA side of things), and fit the resistors in there.

Good luck, hope it all works out 100% and it should be a good fix to spread around to everyone who needs it ;-)

Tried it out this morning, but due to not having the the 75 ohm 5% resistor (They did not have any & told me this would be better? maybe full of shit!?)
I had to get the 75 ohm 1%... I don't know if this is why it is not working but I soldered and earthed it and the is no difference at all

Here is a picture of the 75 ohm soldered to the vga end, grey dongle side is the cga

Marty Machine

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1% is fine, it just means it's more accurate and is closer to being 75ohm than what a 5% one would be (anywhere from 70-80ohm).

Pity it did nothing for you, that sucks ;-(

I'm not sure where you can go from here, more google searching i guess?

Offline casperthefriendly

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Tried it out this morning, but due to not having the the 75 ohm 5% resistor (They did not have any & told me this would be better? maybe full of shit!?)
I had to get the 75 ohm 1%... I don't know if this is why it is not working but I soldered and earthed it and the is no difference at all

Here is a picture of the 75 ohm soldered to the vga end, grey dongle side is the cga


Have you tried reseating all of the cables connected to the RFM PC? Maybe try the same with the connectors inside the PC?

As I mentioned earlier, I had this issue on my stock RFM and it was a suspect connection at the PC. With the game on, give the cables a bit of a wiggle to see hat happens

Offline Dazzat

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Thanks casperthefriendly  I have reseated the cables numerous times and CO cleaned all electrical components, I even tried to find new ribbon cables and rfm ports to replace old ones but they are very hard to find... All pins and ribbons are mint and showing current...... Might have better luck on ebay.

Thank you again Marty Machine, I'm glad the jaycar guy was not putting me in the wrong direction. but made it more precise.

Do you think I have put them in the right spot on the VGA side? If you look closly I have soldered the resistors to the pin outs. (very easy to do looking at the traces)
Oh and I have been earthing straight to earth wiring that continues around the rfm cabinet, I hope that is right...


So far to to the people that have helped THANKYOU!!!! $%$
« Last Edit: December 02, 2012, 02:27:21 PM by Dazzat »

Marty Machine

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Do you think I have put them in the right spot on the VGA side? If you look closly I have soldered the resistors to the pin outs. (very easy to do looking at the traces)
I'm assuming (hoping) you've soldered onto the correct pins, being R,G,B and not some ground or unused pins?

Have you tried a different LCD monitor, preferably different brand/model?

I wonder if it's an issue with the LCD being too slow with it's refresh rate?, most LCDs are 5mSecs, but better (pricey) ones are quicker at 2mSecs...
The smear might in fact be a symptom of the monitor scans itself not keeping up with the colour information, regardless of the monitor being able to sync/scan at 31.5khz etc etc...

clutching at straws.....

Offline humpalot

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Have you played around with the clamp st and clamp sp settings in the menu of the convertor board?  Unless you get these settings perfect for your monitor then the picture is always going to look crap.

Tried this today and had no luck, not a difference at all unfortunately.. Still had the smear across the screen  BIG TIME, especially green &^&

Still thinking that it's the clamp settings as the pictures that you posted look like it.  They can be a real bitch to get right and one setting effects the other.  My Daytona USA conversion was a bitch to get right, lots of patience is required.  I've done a few other LCD conversions and they were pretty much just set the clamp settings to those shown on the youtube video, but the Daytona USA was completely different.  Thinking that RFM might be a similar bitch to get the settings right on as well.

If no good, maybe just buy one already done?  http://lockwhenlit.com/products.htm

Offline Dazzat

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Have you played around with the clamp st and clamp sp settings in the menu of the convertor board?  Unless you get these settings perfect for your monitor then the picture is always going to look crap.

Tried this today and had no luck, not a difference at all unfortunately.. Still had the smear across the screen  BIG TIME, especially green &^&

Still thinking that it's the clamp settings as the pictures that you posted look like it.  They can be a real bitch to get right and one setting effects the other.  My Daytona USA conversion was a bitch to get right, lots of patience is required.  I've done a few other LCD conversions and they were pretty much just set the clamp settings to those shown on the youtube video, but the Daytona USA was completely different.  Thinking that RFM might be a similar bitch to get the settings right on as well.

If no good, maybe just buy one already done?  http://lockwhenlit.com/products.htm

LOL that is exactly the one I have, dongle was bought from him, but I bought the 8200 cga converter, and I bought the lcd bracket from him aswell

Offline Dazzat

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Do you think I have put them in the right spot on the VGA side? If you look closly I have soldered the resistors to the pin outs. (very easy to do looking at the traces)
I'm assuming (hoping) you've soldered onto the correct pins, being R,G,B and not some ground or unused pins?

Have you tried a different LCD monitor, preferably different brand/model?

I wonder if it's an issue with the LCD being too slow with it's refresh rate?, most LCDs are 5mSecs, but better (pricey) ones are quicker at 2mSecs...
The smear might in fact be a symptom of the monitor scans itself not keeping up with the colour information, regardless of the monitor being able to sync/scan at 31.5khz etc etc...

clutching at straws.....


Correct pins have been soldered
Will try another monitor now

Offline Dazzat

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Tried with an older LCD monitor, still identical problem.

Offline humpalot

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Well good choice on the adapter, you do not need any additional modification to that converter board, so get rid of the resistors.

Take the adapter off and if you have an arcade cabinet running RGB try and get a clear picture on the LCD using the converter board.  That way you can exclude what you think is just a RFM issue.

The stamp settings when not correctly adjusted give that tail appearance to SOME graphics and also can also affect the graphic colours.  Be prepared to sit down for a couple of hours and play around with the stamp settings until you have a clear picture.

Offline Dazzat

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Well good choice on the adapter, you do not need any additional modification to that converter board, so get rid of the resistors.

Take the adapter off and if you have an arcade cabinet running RGB try and get a clear picture on the LCD using the converter board.  That way you can exclude what you think is just a RFM issue.

The stamp settings when not correctly adjusted give that tail appearance to SOME graphics and also can also affect the graphic colours.  Be prepared to sit down for a couple of hours and play around with the stamp settings until you have a clear picture.

Unfortunatly I don't have an arcade cabinet to test the converter board, so will try on rfm again

Offline Dazzat

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Well humpalot after spending over 2 hours trying different settings (And a very sore neck because conversion card shows settings normally on lcd and is reversed on rfm reflection LOL)
No go, not even a slight difference, I even tried the clamp settings of 03 & 04 as said in the jamma instructions.

May have to borrow someones RFM pc and rule out any problems from that end as well  ^&^

Offline humpalot

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If you want to post me the converter board, I can test it in my RFM.

Offline Dazzat

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If you want to post me the converter board, I can test it in my RFM.

Thanks Humpalot, I will think about doing that later, My best bet atm is see if a kind person can let me borrow their RFM pc to test the converter and lcd in my rfm I think